| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: This cup, how bright it smil'd!
"Half of my life I strove and fought,
And half I calmly pass'd;
And thou, oh ship with beings fraught,
Sail safely to the last!"
1774.
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TO A GOLDEN HEART THAT HE WORE ROUND HIS NECK.
[Addressed, during the Swiss tour already mentioned, to a present
Lily had given him, during the time of their happy connection,
which was then about to be terminated for ever.]
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa: into their flattened lungs till they could stand alone upon their
feet. No sooner had the baby badgers caught their breath than they
howled and shrieked with pain and fright. Ah! what a dismal cry
was theirs as the whole badger family went forth wailing from out
their own dwelling! A little distance away from their stolen house
the father badger built a small round hut. He made it of bent
willows and covered it with dry grass and twigs.
This was shelter for the night; but alas! it was empty of food
and arrows. All day father badger prowled through the forest, but
without his arrows he could not get food for his children. Upon
his return, the cry of the little ones for meat, the sad quiet of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: view of the valley before us suddenly bursts upon our vision;
rugged hills, clad with verdant forests from summit to base,
level prairie lands, holding in their lap the beautiful Wabasha,
City of the Healing Waters, puissant foe of Bright's disease,
and that grandest conception of nature's works, incomparable Lake Pepin--
these constitute a picture whereon the tourist's eye may gaze
uncounted hours, with rapture unappeased and unappeasable.
'And so we glide along; in due time encountering those majestic domes,
the mighty Sugar Loaf, and the sublime Maiden's Rock--which latter,
romantic superstition has invested with a voice; and oft-times
as the birch canoe glides near, at twilight, the dusky paddler
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